


A moment outside of Time

by AlwaysDreamingAboutFlying, dannyphantomyeetme



Series: #thesquad UFS [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: M/M, Panic Attack, Pre-Relationship, Reality Trip, Summer Vacation, coarse language, cursing, danny fenton needs therapy, pre-thesquad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24357322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysDreamingAboutFlying/pseuds/AlwaysDreamingAboutFlying, https://archiveofourown.org/users/dannyphantomyeetme/pseuds/dannyphantomyeetme
Summary: During "Reality Trip", Danny finds unlikely help in Wes Weston.Or: The origins of Danny's crush on Wes.
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Wesley Weston
Series: #thesquad UFS [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686805
Comments: 8
Kudos: 157





	1. Reality Trip

Everything’s all wrong now.

The world knows Danny’s secret, including his parents and his entire class and, oh yeah, the government. He doesn’t know if he can go home and the Guys in White are after him. Freakshow’s out and about, too, and he needs to be stopped.

So honestly? Hiding in Casper High’s second-floor boys’ bathroom might in fact be the worst possible use of his time right now, but he can’t bring himself to move.

He can’t breathe.

He can hear his own desperate gasps through the ringing in his ears. It’s just that the air doesn’t seem to be reaching his lungs. He’s not sure there’s any air actually going into his body at all. He feels too light and yet ridiculously heavy at the same time.

He left Sam and Tucker in a locker room. Maybe he shouldn’t go back for them. Maybe they’ll be better off if he just disappears. Maybe-

There’s a slam, and a beat later Danny registers it as a door opening and closing. If it’s the GIW coming for him, he’s screwed. His heart is beating in his throat and now he can’t seem to _stop_ breathing. Loudly. He’s being too loud. He’s gonna get found out.

There’s footsteps that stop in front of his stall, hesitant. Then, there’s a knock.

“Hey, uh… dude? You okay in there?”

Great. It’s Wes _freaking_ Weston. Just what Danny needs right now.

“Hello? Who’s in there?” Wes continues. He sounds calm, though maybe somewhat worried, and if he knew who was in this stall he probably wouldn’t sound like that.

Through his own labored breathing, Danny manages a: “Go away.”

“Oh, fuck, Fenton?” Wes asks. “What are you still doing here? You’ve got the entire school in an uproar!”

Wes doesn’t sound like he’s in a hurry to rat him out, but seriously. What part of ‘go away’ doesn’t he understand? It’s just two words. Three syllables. Maybe just two? Danny can’t focus. Why is he even thinking about this in the first place?

“Hey, are you okay? You sound like shit,” Wes says. Danny can hear the sarcastic undertones through the possible concern, and it irks him.

“No.”

“Can you open the door?”

Danny doesn’t think he can move right now.

After a long beat of silence, Wes adds: “I’m coming in there. You better be wearing pants.”

 _What?_ But before Danny can protest, Wes’s face appears underneath the door, and then he’s dragging himself into the stall on his stomach. Danny’s mind conjures up an image of Pennywise the clown for some reason and he almost laughs, even though he also feels like he could cry.

“W-what’re you doing?” he sputters.

“Checking on you, I guess,” Wes says as he stands up and rolls his shoulder. Danny’s sat on the closed toilet lid, looking up at him. “Oh shit, your eyes are glowing.”

Danny blinks. He doesn’t think it’s helping.

His heart is still racing, but his breath isn’t coming as fast now. Maybe it’s the shock of this, of Wes, being here. Why hasn’t he gone to get somebody yet? He’d probably love it if Danny got arrested. He’s been trying to expose Danny all year.

"Okay, you need to stop hyperventilating or you'll make yourself pass out,” Wes says. “Deep breaths. Four beats in, four beats out.”

Danny frowns but does as he’s told. It helps, a little, if only because he’s so busy copying Wes’s breathing that he forgets to think about all the problems he’s currently supposed to be fixing. Nope, okay, now he’s thinking about them again.

“Hey, hey,” Wes says when Danny’s breathing speeds up again. “Look at me. _Look at me_.”

Danny looks at him. His hair’s a mess, and he’s wearing a black Dumpty Humpty shirt (Danny didn’t know he liked them. He doesn’t know a lot about Wes, honestly, other than once every other week he yells at their classmates that _Oh my God Fenton is **clearly** Phantom are you all dumb?!_). He also has a… is that a black eye? Why does Wes have a black eye?

“Are you okay?” Danny asks.

Wes gives Danny a look like he thinks Danny is kidding, then snorts.

“All the shit that’s happening to you, and you’re asking _me_ if _I’m_ okay? God, you’re a dork.”

“Your eye-”

“It’s nothing, Dash threw a basketball in my face. I barely feel it.”

“Okay, tough guy,” Danny says, rolling his eyes. “I was just asking."

“How about you? Are you okay?”

Danny doesn’t answer.

“That’s quite a show you put on out there,” Wes continues after a while. “Exposing yourself live on TV. Not your brightest move.”

“You think I _meant_ to do that?” Danny asks. His voice sounds a little higher than usual. “I’m in deep crud right now.”

“Yeah, I know,” Wes says apologetically. “I’m sorry, man.”

Danny rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“No, I mean it,” Wes says. He leans back against the door, and Danny thinks he should feel trapped, but he doesn’t. Part of it is that he can vaguely feel his powers beginning to come back, but it’s also something different. Something he can’t put his finger on. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“Wes, you’ve been trying to expose me for months.”

“Yeah, but to like, our class,” Wes says. “I didn’t want _this_. Those guys out there, who knows what they’re gonna do to you if they catch you.”

Danny feels another pang of some sharp emotion he can’t identify. If even Wes thinks he’s in danger, it isn’t just some fear in his head. It’s real.

All of this is real.

Wes puts his hands on Danny’s shoulders.

“Okay, it’s okay, Fenton. They’re not gonna look in here, I don’t think.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, they haven’t yet,” Wes says. “I don’t think they’re expecting you to be taking a bathroom break. You’re okay right now. Where’re Sam and Tucker?”

“Huh?” The subject change seems sudden.

“I thought you left with them.”

“I left them in a locker room,” Danny says. “I didn’t wanna… I couldn’t let them see me like this.” Which, now that he can think more clearly, was stupid. They’ve seen him in worse states, and he could have been caught by anyone, running around the school on his own. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“Go home?”

“My parents probably saw the broadcast. They-” Danny shudders.

They’ll have questions, or worse: they’ll look for answers themselves. He can imagine what they'll do. He thinks of some of their scalpels, ones they’ve never had a chance to use, and imagines them dripping with a mixture of green and red. He closes his eyes so Wes won’t notice how wet his eyes are getting.

“Shit, they don’t _know_?” Wes asks.

“No. They’re ghost hunters.”

“Yeah, but they’re your parents,” Wes says. “You live with them. How can they not know? It’s so obvious!”

“Thanks a lot!”

“I’m sorry, I just- wow. I just assumed they knew,” Wes says.

“Well, they don’t. They wanna rip Phantom- me apart, ‘molecule by molecule’,” Danny says. “If I go home…”

“Damn…” Wes sounds like he doesn’t know what to say.

Danny doesn’t like the way Wes is looking at him.

“But they didn’t know it’s you,” Wes says. “You can’t know how they’ll react.”

“I have a pretty clear idea,” Danny insists. I just-”

He’s scared.

That’s what it comes down to.

With one crash landing, his entire life has changed. People know. His life will never be the same. He’ll become a lab rat. Maybe the Guys in White will capture him. Maybe he’ll come home and his parents will lock him in the lab. Maybe-

Well, whatever happens, he’s never just gonna be Danny Fenton anymore. Even if he manages to get out of being dissected somehow, everyone in his life, every new person he ever meets will just… _know_. How is he supposed to deal with that?

“I wish everyone could just forget,” Danny whispers.

Wes sighs.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

They’re quiet for a moment. It feels like too long.

“Thank you,” Danny says. “For helping me.”

“Don’t worry about it. Panic attacks suck.”

Wes is looking at Danny in that way again. Danny looks back up at him this time, frowning.

“Are my eyes still green?” he asks.

“What? Oh, no. They’re blue,” Wes says. “Well, they’re a little green, around the- Whatever. Doesn’t matter. I was just thinking that- You’re probably not gonna be able to come back to school anymore.”

“Oh… I guess not.” Danny hadn’t even been thinking about school.

“That’ll be boring. Who will I annoy?”

“Only everyone,” Danny says.

“Sarcasm. Great, that means you’re okay.”

Wes is smiling. Danny doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Wes smile before. He’s always scowling. Or sulking. Or yelling. He looks different when he smiles. If Wes was ever at ease around him before, Danny definitely missed it. 

“I guess,” Danny shrugs. “But I don’t know how I’m gonna get back to Sam and Tucker without making a scene.” Or if he should.

Wes’s smile shifts into a smirk, one that Danny is all too familiar with. That’s the same smirk Wes has when he’s plotting something. “I think I can help you with that. They’d follow the guy who always wants to get you caught, wouldn’t they?”

“What are you talking about?”

Wes never responds, just opens the stall and heads to the bathroom door. He presses his ear to it before glancing back at Danny over his shoulder. 

“Just stay as far away from me as you can. Shouldn’t be too hard, right, _Phantom_?” The smirk on Wes’s face has officially switched from plotting to smug as shit. “I totally called that, by the way.”

“Uh-huh,” Danny groans, standing up. He tries to go invisible, but only stays that way for a second before flickering back into sight. Darn. “Where are you gonna go?”

“The Nasty Burger. It’s not that much of a stretch to think you’d go there.” Wes is quiet for a minute before looking back towards the door. “Just find your friends and get the hell out of here, alright?”

“Aww, Wes,” Danny can’t help but tease. “It’s almost like you care about me or something.”

“Not a chance, idiot.” Then he’s gone, out the door to distract the Guys In White so that Danny can get away.

Danny stands in the empty bathroom for a minute, and then he follows.


	2. Boxed Lunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The origins of Danny's camera-replacing habit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an edited reupload: spelling's been improved and two whole sentences have been added. I'm not sure about bringing back the other chapters yet. I'm editing them for now, trying to write the last two chapters.

“Danny, you’re staring.”

Sam’s voice pierces through his haze, and Danny blinks at his friend, his burger half-raised to his mouth. He lowers it and cocks his head to the side.

“Huh?” he asks.

“You were staring,” Sam repeats, sounding annoyed.

“Yeah, what’s so interesting about Weston anyway?” Tucker asks.

Danny looks past Sam, at where Wes Weston is sitting alone in a corner booth. He looks like a mess: his hair is messy, he’s got bags underneath his eyes, and there’s a huge stain on his red shirt. He’s typing away at his laptop like a maniac, occasionally glancing at an open book on the table next to it. Danny doesn’t think he’s blinked in five minutes.

“Danny? Hello? Earth to idiot!” Sam says, waving her hand.

“Sorry, guys,” Danny says. “I was just… thinking, I guess.”

“Well, stop.” Sam stabs her fork into a piece of tofu on her plate a little more forcefully than necessary. “You’re gonna give yourself a headache, going cross-eyed like that.”

“Sorry,” Danny says again.

His eyes drift back to Wes.

It’s been a month since Danny defeated Freakshow. A month since his identity was almost exposed to the entire world. One whole month since Wes, of all people, found him in an abandoned bathroom, helped him through what Danny maintains was _not_ a panic attack, thank you very much, and then distracted the Guys in White so Danny could go find his friends.

Wes doesn’t remember any of that, of course, but Danny can’t stop thinking about it.

He can’t stop thinking about Wes’s easygoing smile, the one and only smile Danny’s ever seen on Wes’s face. He can’t stop thinking about Wes’s hands on his shoulders, either, or the steadiness to his voice when he told Danny: ‘ _look at me_ ’.

Danny doesn’t understand himself sometimes. 

He hasn’t told Sam and Tucker about what happened, because then he’d have to explain the way his stomach’s all knotted up now. He’s known he’s pan for a while, but to have a crush on _Wes Weston_ of all people? Danny must be the biggest masochist in the world.

Wes hates him.

Danny catches the way Sam and Tucker glance at each other and frowns at them.

“What?”

“You seem distracted,” Sam offers. “Is something going on?”

“If Weston’s bothering you again-” Tucker says, and Danny shakes his head.

“No, nothing like that. I haven’t talked to him all summer.”

“Then what is it?” Sam asks.

Danny considers his words for a moment before shrugging.

“It’s just… Wes looks like he hasn’t slept in a while, is all.” It’s a safe observation, one that doesn’t betray any particular emotion towards the guy.

And it’s true. Wes looks like he's got at least a week's worth of sleep to catch up on.

"So? Let that guy destroy himself with his bad habits," Sam says. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing, I guess," Danny mumbles half-heartedly. He finally takes a bite of his burger and chews on it slowly so he has an excuse not to say anything else.

Just then, the air in the Nasty Burger seems to grow colder. The skin on Danny's arms prickles with goosebumps, every hair on his body stands up straight, and after he swallows his food, a gasp of cool, foggy air escapes his lips.

"Great," he grumbles.

There’s loud, dramatic laughter echoing all around them as Danny’s burger flies out from under his nose. Tucker cries out in protest when his food does the same, joining up with the swirling ball of meat in the middle of the restaurant.

With a pop, the Lunch Lady appears in front of it, hands raised above her head as she continues to laugh.

Ghosts and their dramatic entrances.

There’s a fraction of a moment where nothing happens, and then there’s screaming, and a lot of it. In the chaos of teenagers and staff alike all trying to get out the door at the same time, Danny manages to duck underneath the table undetected.

“I’m going ghost!”

With that familiar catch-phrase, a white ring of light appears around his middle. It splits, and the two rings make their way up and down his body, changing regular clothes into a spandex suit and a human boy into something else completely.

Phantom phases through the ground, flying up in front of the Lunch Lady.

“Hi there,” he says. “I think you’re confused. You see: school’s out for summer.”

Sometimes, the Lunch Lady is up for conversation. She can be pretty nice when she is, despite her constant mood swings. Very rarely, she’s even downright reasonable, and Phantom can get her to go away without an actual fight.

This is not one of those times.

“Hunger never takes a break!” The ghost extends her hand towards Phantom. The giant meatball (literally) behind her stretches, turning into a hand that reaches for Phantom and tries to grab him. He turns his legs into a tail and manages to dodge.

“Wow, going for a hands-on approach today, huh?” he asks.

The Lunch Lady doesn’t reply, just goes to hit Phantom as her meat collection begins to gather around her, sticking to her skin like it’s made to be there.

Phantom dodges, barely. He flies up and phases through the roof, into the air. The Lunch Lady, now in full meat suit (which is just as gross as it sounds, by the way) follows and flies at him full-speed. This time she manages to get a punch in, and Phantom goes flying backward through the air.

“You look a little pale, honey,” the Lunch Lady says in a sugary-sweet voice. “Have you been eating enough?”

“I was trying to when you interrupted me!” Phantom says.

“Then eat my fist!” the Lunch Lady shouts.

“No, thanks!”

Raising his hand in front of him, Phantom gathers as much energy as he can in his palm and throws it towards the meat monster. Some of the meat explodes around them, but the Lunch Lady still has more than enough around her to stay in her current form.

The next few minutes are a whirlwind of punching and shooting and dodging, and so much meat that Phantom is seriously beginning to consider becoming a vegetarian. Finally, he seems to be getting the upper-hand, a hard punch sending the other ghost crashing into the ground, meat exploding _everywhere_.

He reaches for his thermos.

There’s a hard blow against his back. Phantom feels the air get knocked from his lungs and goes flying. Mid-air, he manages to turn and shoot an ectoblast at his assailant, who barely avoids it.

“Box ghost?” Phantom asks. “What the-”

“Beware! For I am the Box Ghost!” the Box Ghost shouts, like Phantom didn’t just say his name already. “And now, working together with my wife, I am twice as strong as before!”

“Wife?” Phantom looks down at where the Lunch Lady is recovering, and then back at the Box Ghost, confused. “When did you guys get married?”

“Oh, some fifty years ago,” the Lunch Lady says happily as she flies up to float next to the Box Ghost. “But we met exactly seventy years ago, didn’t we dear?”

“Yes!” the Box Ghost shouts, like it’s another dramatic declaration.

“So, what, you guys decided to celebrate your anniversary by getting your asses kicked by Danny Phantom?” Phantom strikes a pose mid-air, his hand on his hip. “I’m so flattered! Congratulations, by the way.”

“Thank you!” the Lunch Lady says. “Now… Prepare for a boxed lunch of doom!”

Danny freezes.

_Box Lunch._

A punch hits him straight in the jaw. Danny can’t even tell who throws it. Next thing he knows, he’s crash-landing into the same alley he threw the Lunch Lady into just two minutes ago. Before he can help it, he reverts back into Danny Fenton.

“Ouch,” he mutters to himself, rubbing the side of his face.

“No _fucking_ way.”

Danny’s head snaps to the side.

Wes is standing in the open doorway of the Nasty Burger’s emergency exit, green eyes wide. He’s got his camera raised in front of him.

_Holy shit, did he take a picture of Danny turning?!_

“Wes!” Danny says. “You- I- this isn’t what you think!”

“Oh, really?” Wes asks, sarcasm lacing his voice.

Danny looks up at the sky, but there’s no sign of the Lunch Lady _or_ the Box Ghost now. They must have taken Danny’s transformation as a win and left. He looks back at Wes.

“This isn’t- I was just- I-”

But he can’t come up with a good lie; not when the pavement is cracked underneath him from how hard he hit it. Wes saw everything, anyway. He looks ridiculously smug.

And heck if it isn’t a good look on him.

Danny scrambles to his feet.

“Give me that camera.”

“What? No way!” Wes says. “I finally have evidence! You’re going down, _Phantom_.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Danny says.

He doesn’t like to use his super-speed (or his super-strength, or any of his powers that put strain on his muscles) while he’s in human form. It makes his body feel weird, somewhat achy. Sometimes it genuinely hurts.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

In a flash, he snatches the camera from Wes’s hands and throws it on the ground so hard that a bunch of the pieces shatter.

“Hey!” Wes yells. “Do you know how expensive that was?!”

He actually sounds choked up, as if he might cry. That would be a new one. Still, Danny feels guilty immediately.

“Yeah, well, I can’t have you telling everyone what I am,” he says.

“I still could!”

“You can try, but nobody will believe you, so...” Danny shrugs.

Wes looks away, rubs his eye with the palm of his hand, and sniffs and _wow_ , Danny hasn’t felt this shitty about his own behavior in a _while_.

“Hey, uh, are you okay?” he asks.

“Fuck off, Phantom,” Wes says. He bows down to pick up his destroyed camera and turns around, heading back into the Nasty Burger.

Danny breathes in deeply and lets it out slowly.

“Great, Fenton, you made him cry.”

It’s the first day back at school. Everyone’s excited not to be a Freshman anymore, but Wes thinks that’s bullshit. It’s not like anything’s really gonna be different.

He pulls his hand through his hair as he opens his locker and suppresses a yawn. He stayed up way too late last night reading about time travel. That’s been the general theme of his entire summer, really. He can’t remember the last time he slept a full night.

He doesn’t notice the shiny new camera sitting beside his math book at first. When he does, he frowns.

“What the fuck?”

He looks around, but there aren’t many people in the hallway and of the few who are, nobody’s paying attention to him.

He looks back at the camera. It’s the exact make and model of his old one, the one fucking _Phantom_ destroyed. He still can’t believe he was so close to exposing the guy. He _had proof_!

There’s a sticky note on the camera, and Wes takes it in shaky hands and reads it slowly.

_Get some fucking proof already, you freak. We’re tired of hearing you talk about it._

Wes looks around the hallway again, but there’s still nobody watching him.

Who left this here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering: yes. "Boxed Lunch" was a trigger. Danny-boy is traumatized from TUE.


End file.
